Awesome – Keyboard Layout Switch Shortcuts

awesomekeyboard shortcutskeyboard-layout

I use awesome as a window manager under gnome (debian system) and I made a widget to switch keyboard layout by this code:

-- Keyboard map indicator and changer
    kbdcfg = {}
    kbdcfg.cmd = "setxkbmap"
    kbdcfg.layout = { { "us", "" }, { "ru", "phonetic" } }
    kbdcfg.current = 1  -- us is our default layout
    kbdcfg.widget = widget({ type = "textbox", align = "right" })
    kbdcfg.widget.text = " " .. kbdcfg.layout[kbdcfg.current][1] .. " "
    kbdcfg.switch = function ()
       kbdcfg.current = kbdcfg.current % #(kbdcfg.layout) + 1
       local t = kbdcfg.layout[kbdcfg.current]
       kbdcfg.widget.text = " " .. t[1] .. " "
       os.execute( kbdcfg.cmd .. " " .. t[1] .. " " .. t[2] )
    end

    -- Mouse bindings
    kbdcfg.widget:buttons(awful.util.table.join(
        awful.button({ }, 1, function () kbdcfg.switch() end)
    ))
-- Alt + Right Shift switches the current keyboard layout
    awful.key({ "Mod1" }, "Shift_R", function () kbdcfg.switch() end),

It works, however there is a serious problem with keyboard behavior. When I switch to ru layout non of my keyboard bindings works. Awesome bindings don't work. For example vim shortcuts don't also work and etc. How I can solve this problem?

Best Answer

Your keyboard bindings are not working because your keyboard no longer has those keysyms.

If you want to have, for example, Alt+F do something, then you need "F" in some key. But if you load "ru" alone, then there is no "F" at all (nor any latin letter).

I think, specially when you need to handle multiple layouts, that it is much better to let X11 (through setxkbmap) do the job for you; the way the window managers do it is much more limited as you have discovered.

You may also try, as the awfull widget seems to call setxkbmap, to change "ru" with "ru,us", eg:

kbdcfg.layout = { { "us", "" }, { "ru,us", "phonetic" } }

that way, the "us" layout will be stacked on top of the "ru" one when loaded, and the keysysms of the "us" layout, while still not directly typeable, will be seen by the X11 layer that handles the key bindings.

Related Solutions

Cannot switch to console anymore after using Alt_R as mod4

When trying to use similar window managers (xwem, ratpoison) for the first time, I first also tried to follow the setup instructions involving xmodmap to get a modifiier key for the window manager, but then I felt that using xmodmap in my system causes some mess, because in my system (an ALTLinux distro) attention has always been paid to multilingual keyboard configuration via XKB, rather than via xmodmap.

So, I found an XKB option to label the key I wanted as "Hyper", and then used the "Hyper" modifier in the configuration for xwem or ratpoison.

In my case, the option to setxkbmap is:

 -option altwin:hyper_win

and here is the comment I've saved on the occasion of adding it to my setup:

xemacs-xwem uses Hyper, so I found this predefined XKB map (in xkb/symbols/altwin), which uses the WIN keys.

Perhaps later I'll make up another XKB map for me, say, using the right Control as Hyper (that will force my hand to use the right Control--now my hand just ignores it).

I thought it's a more clean way to get myself a Hyper key through XKB rather than through xmodmap (as described in XWEM docs), because:

xmodmap configuration of modifier keys seems not to be nice w.r.t. the way it forces one to present one's intentions: one must say something about arbitrarily numbered modifier bits, but I don't want to think about these technical things: I need merely a "Hyper" modifier, not some obscure manipulations with the internals! In xmodmap, I'd need to give 2 or even 3 obscure statements to achieve the result, although logically this is a single wish and operation. (One xmodmap statement would not be enough, cf. XEmacs' warnings (FIXME: insert!) if you map Control_R to a modN; there are some technical constraints.)

one is told stories that XKB and xmodmap don't play well together, so that not all X programs will work nicely and coherently if you mix them (I must give a link here, FIXME).

Here is the relevant definition from /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/altwin, if someone is interested:

partial modifier_keys 
xkb_symbols "hyper_win" {
    key <LWIN> {    [   Hyper_L         ]   };
    key <RWIN> {    [   Hyper_R         ]   };
    modifier_map Mod4   { Hyper_L, Hyper_R };
};

KDE – Managing Multiple Keyboard Layouts and Shortcuts

You can set

localectl set-keymap --no-convert <keymap>

Which will change the keymap used at startup. Substitute keymap here with the one you'd like to use. Also ensure that you change your other locale information.

Best Answer

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Cannot switch to console anymore after using Alt_R as mod4

KDE – Managing Multiple Keyboard Layouts and Shortcuts

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